With “24: Legacy” premiering earlier this year, I have a perfect excuse to rewatch “24” Season 1 (2001-02, Fox; now streaming on Amazon Prime). Even without “Legacy,” this seems like a good time to get nostalgic about a show that was presciently conceived before the Twin Towers fell and went on to become the definitive post-9/11 drama.
With a mix of his own ideas and the spotlighting of others’, Chuck Klosterman’s ninth book, “But What If We’re Wrong” (2016), had me wanting to discuss these ideas with someone after each chapter. Like all of his works – but on steroids this time – this one is utterly engaging (except for one baffling misstep, which […]
If you’re following the EU in chronological order, Michael Reaves’ “Coruscant Nights I: Jedi Twilight” (2008) is an oddity for a couple reasons. First, rather than trying to track down Obi-Wan and Yoda, as one might expect, Vader becomes obsessed with finding Jax Pavan. This feels like equal parts “inexplicable shift in the plotline” and “compelling mystery […]
After receiving “many thousands” of letters and emails asking for a sequel to “The Ice Limit” (2000) (as they recount in an author’s note), Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child finally go “Beyond the Ice Limit” (May 2016, hardcover; now in paperback). As those readers sensed, and as the authors realize in this 374-page novel, there is more […]
If you can spare 91 minutes for a taut, tense horror flick, check out “The Monster,” which had a limited theatrical release last year and is now available on Amazon Prime. Starring an against-type Zoe Kazan (“Ruby Sparks,” “What If”) as mother Kathy and 15-year-old Ella Ballentine as daughter Lizzy, this riff from writer-director Bryan Bertino dispenses […]
Following up on BBC’s “The Office” – which aired back in “Two Thousand and cough-cough” (actually 2001-03) – Ricky Gervais finds there’s still plenty of room to pound the joke into the ground in “David Brent: Life on the Road” (released last year in the U.K., and now available on Netflix). Although there are some viewers who […]
“Crimson Shore” (November 2015 hardcover; now in paperback) is in many ways a classic standalone Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child potboiler, but it also has character, plot and thematic elements that push the Agent Pendergast series forward. The first thing readers will notice when delving into this 15th Pendergast novel is the sense of place, which […]
First episode impressions (TV review): The ambitious “X-Men” Universe series gets off to a messy start.
The Archie Comics gang debuted in 1941 and still hold their place as American high school archetypes. They made the leap to cartoons in the ’60s, to a TV movie in 1990 (“To Riverdale and Back Again”) and to a live-action series in the mid-’90s (“Sabrina, the Teenage Witch”). Those adaptations were tame and straightforward. […]
Sitcoms aren’t usually the best genre to binge-watch, as they tend to not have the dramatic stakes or surprises that make you want to jump right into the next episode. Often, sitcoms work well as something to have on in the background. But “The Mindy Project” — of which I binged Seasons 4 and the first part […]